BUBBA WALLACE SPEAKS PUBLICLY ABOUT ARIC ALMIROLA CONFRONTATION
Bubba Wallace didn’t have much to say about a reported physical altercation with Aric Almirola that got the latter suspended from his part-time NASCAR Xfinity Series ride by Joe Gibbs Racing.
As the story goes, the two drivers got into it last month during an intra-squad Toyota meeting featuring drivers from all the teams under the manufacturer’s umbrella. Almirola was viewed as the aggressor and was thus suspended.
Almirola is expected to return to his role within the Gibbs team next month at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. For his part, now that the altercation was made public, Wallace wasn’t going to offer much.
“They don’t want me to get into the details,” Wallace told reporters on Saturday at Nashville Superspeedway. “It keeps some people’s images good. I think I said enough at Charlotte last year.
“All in all, life is good for me. That shit happened a month ago. A lot of good has come my way and that’s what I’m focused on, focused on getting our stuff turned back around. Off the track, I’m focused on my wife and baby boy that’s growing and growing. That’s all you can ask for. Things are good off the race track. Not so much on track and that’s what we’re focused on right now. There you go, that’s the only question you’ll get.”
Wallace is referencing an argument between the two during the Coca-Cola 600 last year.
Almirola, then driving in his final full-time Cup Series season for Stewart-Haas Racing, had an on-track run-in with Wallace and said he was shown the middle finger. Thus, Almirola confronted Wallace over it.
“Just early in the race, I felt like I gave him a lot of room,” Almirola said. “We were racing, and I felt like I was running him pretty clean, and I felt like he was racing me really dirty. I let him go and then he shot me the bird, so I just went to go ask him why he shot me the bird. And then he started mouthing off and cussing at me, and I just told him I wasn’t going to have that.”
Wallace called him two-faced.
“Yeah, passionate man,” Wallace said. “We were racing hard in the second stage and we finished fourth so it was a good day…I don’t know, we were trying to figure out how to finish fourth and we did it…When you walk around with two faces, that’s what you get.”
Denny Hamlin, who co-owns the 23XI Racing Toyota Wallace drives said he let Joe Gibbs Racing handle everything and less he knows, the better.
“I wasn’t there at the time,” Hamlin said on Saturday. “So, I don’t know what transpired, it’s all hearsay from my standpoint. At 23XI we let Joe Gibbs Racing handle it and they did what they saw fit. Again, I don’t know all the details because I didn’t want to get too much into the personal business and still don’t.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.
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2024-06-29T20:59:34Z dg43tfdfdgfd